Thursday, October 18, 2012

Join people across the nation who are standing strong against the hate.
Add yourself to our map as a voice for tolerance.

The Southern Poverty Law Center counted 1,018 active hate groups in
the United States in 2011. Only organizations and their chapters
known to be active during 2011 are included.
All hate groups
have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of
people, typically for their immutable characteristics.
This
list was compiled using hate group publications and websites, citizen
and law enforcement reports, field sources and news reports.
Hate
group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies,
speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing. Websites appearing to
be merely the work of a single individual, rather than the
publication of a group, are not included in this list. Listing here
does not imply a group advocates or engages in violence or other
criminal activity.

There’s a movement afoot to punish judges for decisions that offend political partisans.

October 15, 2012

When the National Football League ended its lockout of the
professional referees and the refs returned to call the games, all
across the country players, fans, sponsors and owners breathed a sigh of
relief. Fans were grateful for the return of qualified judges to keep
things on the up and up.

After the now infamous Seattle Seahawks-Green Bay Packers game, when
questionable calls by the replacement refs led to a disputed 14-12 win
by the Seahawks, even union-busting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and vice
presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the pride of Janesville, Wisconsin,
became – briefly – fans of organized labor, calling for a negotiated
peace and bringing the real refs back on the field.

In Baltimore, when the professional referees returned for their first
game of the season, fans gave them a standing ovation. One held a
sign: “Finally! We get to yell at real refs! Welcome back!” As the
captains of the Ravens and Cleveland Browns met at the center of the
field for the coin toss, veteran official Gene Steratore turned on his
microphone greeted them with, “Good evening, men. It’s good to be
back.” The stadium erupted in a roar.

It was a revealing glimpse into a basic truth of American
sports: Without the guys who enforce the rules, everything else is
pointless. READ MORE

Let’s
call this Conservative Chaos Theory. Without hypocrisy, the
conservative mind would explode from the sheer force of its eternal
contradictions.

October 17, 2012

Forty years ago, conservatives awakened to the fact that their agenda
was getting little traction in American public life. So they hatched a
plan turn things around. Pooling their considerable financial resources,
they would invest in the marketplace of ideas and fund books,
professors, journalists – anything to promote, amplify, and disseminate
their right-wing worldview. In short, they would buy the American mind.

Quite a bargain, that. One of their most successful investments was
the support of an eager young man who got his start writing for the Dartmouth Review ,
a conservative newspaper founded in 1980 by disgruntled students who
thought that the college’s daily paper was way too liberal. Dinesh
D’Souza was carefully groomed to flower into what he is today – a
vitriolic, one-sided, outrageously craven wingnut who will say anything
and everything as long as it supports the most rancid right-wing agenda.
You might think of him as the inhabitant of the deepest, darkest spot
in our political discourse, the Mariana Trench of American intellectual
life. READ MORE

Romney offers an easy-to-grasp explanation that speaks to white anxiety about the future.

October 16, 2012

SIDNEY, OHIO—At the Shelby county fairgrounds in Sidney, Ohio, on
Oct. 10, a jumbotron showed a bus approaching. Image became reality as
Mitt Romney’s bulbous white chariot glided into the rally of thousands.

It was an impressive entrance, for those who are impressed by RVs.
Bounding up to a podium, Romney was ready to proselytize. Thousands
of faces turned toward him in the chilly evening air. Word was that
Romney’s conquest of Obama in the first debate had infused his robotic
demeanor with passion. It was hard to see much evidence of that.

To polite applause, Romney blandly declared, “That’s an Ohio welcome.
Thank you guys.” He tried to rouse the audience with a counter to Obama
campaign chants of “Four more years,” and the crowd hesitantly recited
“Four more weeks,” their tone as flat as the surrounding farmland.

No matter. Romney dove into his stump speech. It was the gospel of
lower taxes, freer trade, stronger military, and drill, baby, drill, and
the audience was receptive. He hit all the buttons, “jobs,” “small
business,” “compete,” and “opportunities.” Some specifics drew hearty
cheers: “Get rid of the death tax,” “get that pipeline in from Canada,”
and “our military must be second to none.”
The crowd responded favorably because the ideas are presented simply
and clearly. People are hurting, and Romney says he’ll create more jobs
and put more money in your pocket. His message is he won’t do it through
welfare, like Obama, but by encouraging American values like
entrepreneurialism, strength, and self-sufficiency.

Author Thomas Frank calls this brand of politics “Pity the
Billionaire … a revival crusade preaching the old-time religion of the
free market.” READ MORE

When government works effectively, it becomes an invisible part of everyday life and people start to take it for granted.

October 17, 2012

“Government, keep your hands off my Medicare!”

Commentators and comedians alike had fun with the cognitive
dissonance represented by the statement above, found on more than one
hand-scrawled sign at Tea Party rallies. But while opposition to
government is more at home on the political right, ignorance about the
role of government is a bipartisan malady.

Liberals may shake their heads at the “ignorance” of the Right, but
we’ve seen focus groups in San Francisco comprised of liberal Democrats
argue about whether or not the Bay Area Rapid Transit system is public
transportation. Years of research and polling have shown that there is a
broad lack of understanding about the role of government in our
everyday lives. Many Americans are unaware of just what’s public and
what’s private. Why is that? READ MORE

Mormon women remember Romney's advice when he was a church leader, and there wasn't much 'moderate' about it.

October 17, 2012

The summer of 1983 was blistering hot in New England. A record heat
wave saw temperatures soar toward the 100-degree mark from June well
into September. July had been the hottest month ever recorded at
Boston's Logan Airport.

The region's beloved Boston Red Sox, full of hope and promise early
in spring and claiming first place in the American League East as late
as June 1, apparently melted in the heat, losing game after game and
tumbling to last place by mid-July, where they were to remain the rest
of the season.

It was also during the sweltering summer of 1983 that the family of
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made its celebrated escape
from the oppressive New England heat for the cooler climes of Beach
O'Pines, Ontario, where the Romney family owns a beachfront cottage in a
gated community on the shores of Lake Huron. Prior to departure, Mitt
Romney placed the family dog—an Irish setter named Seamus—into a dog
carrier and lashed it to the roof of the family's Chevy station wagon
for the 12-hour drive into Canada.

The infamous dog ride (dubbed the "Seamus incident") was to become a
full-blown issue in the 2012 presidential primaries, as Romney's chief
Republican opponent, Rick Santorum, invoked the incident to attack
Romney's "character." READ MORE

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton have started a new website, Change For Trayvon, that is dedicated to reviewing the Stand Your Ground laws.
The Mission Statement:
The purpose of Change for Trayvon is to give his family a voice in the political process. Your support will help engage the discussion across the country regarding stand-your-ground laws and the need to revise them so that there is required judicial or prosecutorial review before decisions are made.
We need your help to change the laws which keep parents like ourselves from finding peace. -Tracy Martin
30,000 mothers and fathers lost their children to gun violence.
The Change for Trayvon movement will shine the light on stand-your-ground laws across the nation. These laws allow individuals to shoot first and ask questions later.
For more information email us at: info@changefortrayvon.com
READ MORE

Following speeches from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Rep. Michele Bachmann, CPAC is hosting
the panel “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of
diversity is weakening the American Identity” with Peter Brimelow, the
founder and head of VDARE.com.

VDARE is a White Nationalist
website, run by Brimelow, which frequently publishes the works of
anti-Semitic and racist writers and is named after Virginia Dare, who is
believed to be the first child of English parents born in the Americas.
Brimelow, an immigrant from Great Britain, expresses his fear of the loss of America’s white majority, blames non-white immigrants for social and economic problems and urges the Republican Party to give up on minority voters and focus on winning the white vote. He also said
that a New York City subway is the same as an Immigration and
Naturalization Service waiting room, “an underworld that is not just
teeming but also almost entirely colored.” READ MORE

From raising taxes and legalizing pot to reviving labor rights, voters in 37 states will be busy.

October 4, 2012

There’s more at stake in the November election than who will sit in
the White House next year. Voters in 37 states with ballot initiatives
and legislative referenda will vote on 174 different proposals
that range from overturning anti-union laws passed by Republican
legislatures, to tax measures to fund education, to legalizing marijuana
for medical or recreational use, to upholding gay marriage, to ending
the death penalty and labeling food with genetically modified
ingredients.

Those are just some of the topics that will come before voters this
fall, with 50 of them drafted by interest groups on the political left
and right that filed qualifying petitions. Here's a rundown on the
hottest topics on the state political frontlines. READ MORE

Biotechnology's
promise to feed the world did not anticipate "Trojan corn," "super
weeds" and the disappearance of monarch butterflies.

In the
Midwest and South - blanketed by more than 170 million acres of
genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton - an experiment begun
in 1996 with approval of the first commercial genetically modified
organisms is producing questionable results.

Those results include vast
increases in herbicide use that have created impervious weeds now
infesting millions of acres of cropland, while decimating other plants,
such as milkweeds that sustain the monarch butterflies. More than a
million people have signed a petition to the Food and Drug
Administration to require labeling of genetically engineered food. The
stakes on labeling such foods are huge.

The crops are so
widespread that an estimated 70 percent of U.S. processed foods contain
engineered genes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved more
than 80 genetically engineered crops while denying none.

Genetically engineered crops ... have spawned an infestation of "super
weeds" now covering at least 13 million acres in 26 states. The crops
led to a 400-million-pound net increase in herbicide applications. Dave
Mortensen, a weed ecologist at Pennsylvania State University, said the
number of "super weed" species grew from one in 1996 ... to 22 today.

Last month, scientists definitively tied heavy use of glyphosate to an
81 percent decline in the monarch butterfly population. It turns out
that the herbicide has obliterated the milkweeds on Midwest corn farms
where the monarchs lay their eggs after migrating from Mexico. Iowa
State University ecologist John Pleasants, one of the study's authors,
said the catastrophic decline in monarchs is a consequence of the
genetically engineered crops that no one foresaw. READ MORE

Note:Multiple reliable sources
have shown that you may be eating genetically modified food daily which
scientific experiments have repeatedly demonstrated can cause sickness
and even death in lab animals.

Major new study shows that modified soya produces 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an
authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch
to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world
food crisis.

The study – carried out over the past three years at the University
of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about
10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting
assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university's department of agronomy,
said he started the research – reported in the journal Better Crops –
because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had "noticed
that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions".
He added: "People were asking the question 'how come I don't get as high
a yield as I used to?'"READ MORE